Back Door Visits

Whenever I looked out my back window and saw my mother walking up the driveway, I knew some tale awaited. Either she had been to town and saw a fat woman at the food bar or Daddy wouldn’t do something she thought he should. It was usually the fat woman. My mother had an aversion to fat. Actually, I think it was more deep-seated than that. It was more of a self-esteem issue that stemmed from her childhood. She thought she was too fat – which she wasn’t. She thought she wasn’t as pretty or smart or friendly as others. She was a people watcher and, more often than not, judged accordingly. Understand that words others judged as her being judgmental were actually spoken as constructive criticism. She never intentionally hurt someone’s feelings though they may have walked away with shoulders sagging a bit because of the weight of her words.

Often when she came to my back door, she brought along the excuse for her visit which was to bring some little trinket, an article to read or an occasional loaf of fresh homemade bread. She did make the best bread ever! Daddy would listen with a “humph” or “un-huh” that didn’t satisfy her need for conversation, so I became her sounding board. After she talked nonstop for a while, she would pull her scarf around her head, tie it under her chin and walk back up to her house.

One afternoon she came to the house wearing a big smile and a new necklace daddy had given her for their 60th anniversary. She was absolutely glowing. That was the first and only time I had seen her look like a teenager. She talked about the trip they had taken to a little Bavarian town for their anniversary. They had visited little shops, and she had to tell me about each one. She told me about some dishes she would like to have gotten for me if she “had enough money.” They went into one store that had a long counter that had come from the general store of one of the little towns where Daddy had preached years earlier. I don’t think I ever saw my mother that excited. It was as if years had been erased, and the hands of time had been turned back to the mid ‘40’s. That was one of the last visits she made to my house. Little did I know that within a couple of weeks her life would be taken prematurely. As I sat by her death bed and held her hand, I did not begrudge one of her backdoor visits. Sometimes I still look out my back window and imagine a shadowy figure wearing a scarf coming to my back door.